


such a night as this

by Shenanigans



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Android AU, Blood, Canon Typical Violence, Gen, I promise, Mentioned Barbara Gordon, Mentioned Cassandra Cain, Mentioned Duke Thomas, Violence, android body modifications?, detroit: become human au, mentioned Artemis, mentioned Roy Harper, reference lazarus rages, the kitten is fine, uh. - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:35:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28461774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans
Summary: Grayson was created as a simple caretaker model designed for amusement and entertainment. He's supposed to supplement the boy's interaction with his family and friends. He's supposed to be an enrichment tool. Family secrets force him to run, force him to change, and force him to realize he's something more than he was ever designed to be.He's family and he's on a deviant path.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 14
Kudos: 78





	such a night as this

**Author's Note:**

> I have never played Detroit: Become Human, so all information I have was gleaned from talking to people who do play, watching cut scenes, and reading the wiki's. I'm sorry if I made mistakes on the lexicon of the world, but I had so much fun writing this. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (much thanks to my incredible pinch hit beta who helped slam my grammar back into some semblance of normalcy and the people I met on the server who encouraged this fic to exist.)

Grayson catalogued the room in a brief flicker of data that identified actionable options as the door slammed closed behind them. Damian stumbled forward, skinny arms curled protectively around the black and white kitten he had tucked into his oversized hoodie. The boy didn't make a noise, slipping silently to hide behind the ratty blue wingback. Moldering stuffing puffed along an exposed seam at the edge of one threadbare arm. The room was 13 feet wide and 17 feet long with 15 foot ceilings. The windows faced the south to catch as much sun as possible, irrelevant in the dark cold winter evening. They're limned with fine condensation and smeared with nicotine stains, a few scattered fingerprints smudged near the sill and along the sash. The room was barely illuminated by the soft blue-white glow of exterior streetlights. A crumpled soft pack of imported cigarettes was tucked onto the window ledge, half-hidden by the thick curtains. 

Kane Castle Motel Luxury was rotting. The building was a low-slung two-story stamped in a neat open faced square. The internal windows faced the crumbling parking lot and the empty pool, filled with detritus, drizzle, and broken dreams. The stairwells were placed at each corner and the center of the main stretch of rooms. It wanted to be luxurious once, but settled for an off-brand campy. Each room was a matched rectangle with a front door, long curtained window, and obsolescence. The door wasn't solid, simply a thin plywood veneer painted to resemble old wealth. It matched the crown moulding. A chair-rail runs the entire exposed length of wall, dented with small hammered nails at uneven increments. The wall to wall carpet was dirty, heavily trafficked and flat near the door and toward the window. It managed to stay beige under the neatly-made unused bed sitting on the right, perpendicular to the door and inset between two wooden nightstands. The far wall was busy with a small kitchenette, exterior window, and a door that led to the bathroom.

Grayson had two options: secure the room or keep moving. He looked at where Damian was watching him, half-hidden in the hoodie and wide-eyed but unafraid. He was crouched down and ready; his hand dropped to his pocket where he kept his father's knife. His other hand cupped the soft warm body of the kitten he’d refused to leave behind.

He moved to secure the room. The choice and the action were simultaneous.

"Stay put," he whispered, straightening and moving to pluck the wooden chair from under a dusty writing desk. 

"I'm not an imbecile, Grayson," Damian muttered, but Grayson heard the lingering fear under the haughty tone. He made a note to consider deviating from the plan to comfort the boy. He discarded it just as quickly. He’d been built to multitask. He smiled, tucking the chair back under the tarnished brass door handle. It’s dented on one side, the patina cracked where the duller metal was exposed. There were holes in the wall where a slide lock used to be.

"I am aware," he replied, voice low and modulated to a teasing tone. "You would never let me forget."

The boy tutted at him, frown pulling his mouth into a flat line as he rolled to sit, scooting until he butted up against the wall. He ducked a look at the kitten in his hoodie when it pushed out the top to squirm. Damian shifted to keep it from wriggling an escape. "Do you think we can find food?"

The door was as secure as he could make it, so he straightened, pausing to consider actionable responses before choosing comfort again. It was becoming a default. "We’ll find something."

"Don’t coddle me, Grayson."

He considered the statement briefly, choosing to ignore it, before turning adroitly to start a methodical search. 

There were seven items of interest holding a bright space in his internal visuals. He began the sweep in a clockwise rotation, opening the closet door with a hand braced to muffle the rattle of unused hinges on a track. The left-hand rod had rotted out, a clutter of empty wire hangers gathering dust on the floor. There was a full size iron on the shelf above, a small hanging ironing board, and four empty hangers shifting on the remaining right-hand rod. He reached past them to touch the wall, searching for hidden compartments or the small individual safes motels carried. There was a small rectangular spot on the carpet that was clear, four small indentations new enough to still be fading. He found nothing else but rodent droppings and a carefully carved set of initials: TK. The etched letters were new as well, a small bit of dusted plaster settled against the baseboard beneath it.

“Someone has been here.” He continued to the right, circling to the writing desk. There was a notepad, a small cantilever light with two electric plugs in the base, and a small button switch set on top. Three black ballpoint pens sat in a neat line next to the pad of paper. Above the desk was the first item that had caught his sensors. He looked at the mirror, the glass etched with a few long scratches and puckering dim around the edges. The reflection caught the familiar handsome face he’d been given: blue eyed, black haired, easy to like. Over his right shoulder he noted a trash can that hadn’t been visible from the door. There were dark smears on the edge. He added it to the list of necessary investigations.

“Recently?”

"Do you still have your pencils?" Grayson asked, sidestepping the question and turning to where the boy was running one thin finger along the kitten's bony spine. He looked young, unguarded and kind, smiling softly as it shoved up into his touch.

"Don't break the tip. I don't have my sharpener," Damian’s smile fell into a familiar scowl even as he shifted to sling his bag around his hip and neatly remove the metal tin of colored pencils. Each one was used, the tips clean points with no shavings in the slim plastic rows. He noted the boy favored a Copenhagen blue, static data about the history of the color, the palette of china (the same his family kept- had kept- in the cabinet) and zinc-based gray blues ticking under the thought as the boy plucked out the sienna brown to hold out to him.

"I'll be careful, Dami," Grayson said, switching to the nickname to indicate familiarity and comfort. He took the pencil, turning back to the blank pad of paper. He tipped the pencil, shading in a light fast blur to pick out the indentation of writing left behind. 

_when one dies, the memory lives in the other, and is warm and breathing_ , he deciphered.

"Don't do that," Damian whispered. Grayson knew the boy was gently rebuking the kitten who had stumbled loudly to hiss a threat at the unmoving edge of the curtain. He heard the heavy shift of fabric, the glow of street lamps brightening and darkening as the kitten hooked a sharp claw into the brocade and fell to the side, indignant as it flicked its paw to escape. He didn't have to worry about helping it escape, Damian was already reaching. The boy was careful and kind to animals. 

"Asimov again," he noted aloud, ripping the page from the notepad and folding it into neat fourths to tuck into the back pocket of his jeans. He was wearing a black long sleeved shirt, jeans, and a tidy windbreaker with detachable hood, interior pockets, and a bright blue racing stripe down each arm. Damian said it matched his eyes.

"That makes four. The idea that it’s a trail might not be so ridiculous." The words must have tasted sour at the face Damian made during the concession. He was a handsome child under the vitriolic look, fine boned with the impression of aristocracy. He was black haired and serious with his father's heavy brows and high cheekbones. He had his mother's wide haughty eyes and soft full mouth. He'd seen the photo of her Damian had hidden at the bottom of a carefully locked box in his room. She'd been lovely, elegant and glossy haired with a wry smile and beautiful thickly lashed gaze. Grayson watched Damian square his shoulders and lift his chin, folding away his youth. He was a proud child. His father had been a proud man. Grayson wondered if he’d match Bruce’s breadth. His father had been tall and broad shouldered, a bluntly solid man with wide palmed hands, clear gaze, and rumbling sense of authority.

Grayson was still following the man's final order: "Take him and run."

Damian hasn't forgotten either. At night, the boy twitches in his sleep, the word Father lingering on his tongue. 

The kitten started climbing in determined surges. It clambered up the fabric while Damian watched. "I won't tell anyone you said I was right."

"I didn't say you were _right_ ," the boy corrected primly, shifting to his knees and watching the kitten's progress with clear pride. He turned, arching an eyebrow as Grayson’s search continued, moving to the six drawer dresser topped with an aging mirror. "I simply stated that you may not be incorrect... this time."

“That is high praise,” he replied, straightening and turning to scan the room again. 

He stepped around the wingback, reaching to pluck the soft pack of cigarettes from the sill. The cellophane was wrinkled, the foil foxed and flaking, but the smokes were still straight with a small black lighter tucked into the pack with them. He frowned, prevaricating between his options. He almost didn’t note the decision to pocket them and dispose of them later. He didn’t want to leave them somewhere Damian could be curious. There were no fingerprints on the pack, and it didn’t have the scent markers for smoke. He noted a line of bubbled yellow paint where someone left a lit smoke to fizzle out on the sill. He touched it, unsurprised that it was cold and noting that part of his actionable options had included the possibility of it still being warm. 

He was growing paranoid. He tested the window, finding it sliding open silently, the painted over joints cut with a neat blade.

The kitten skidded down from the drape, bouncing to attack a dangling bit of upholstery batting under the wingback as Damian watched over it. 

“They must have stayed a while,” he explained to the boy as he closed the window against the dreary drizzle. The rain was cold, and the room itself was barely warmer than outside. He nodded once at a thick paperback sitting on the dust covered end table to the left of the queen sized bed. The pillows were flat, one slightly rumpled. The paperback had a bit of gum wrapper tucked into the pages as a bookmark. “Perhaps we should have found a different room.”

“The door was broken once already. It’s why we were able to get in so easily. I doubt we’d have the mass to crack through any maglocks.”

The motel was a skeleton with empty-eyed windows and the lingering smell of piss and fire in the stairwell. They’d tested doorknobs, choosing this one when it opened. The windows were intact, the shades half drawn. The building was dark, just another hunkered abandoned relic off the highway. The forest behind the motel was sparse, as if it was considering an approach to overtake what was left of the ghost suburb on the trail north and out of Gotham. The rain continued, a slow drudgery that weighted their clothes and kept them huddled inside. 

“You’ve gone white,” Damian had hissed at him earlier as they passed anonymously through the city. He’d let the boy fuss, reaching to pull Grayson’s hood up as they ducked under a sagging island in an abandoned gas station. “Fix yourself, Grayson. It’s not that cold.”

The boy was abrupt and gruff, unsocialized-- prone to orders and biting judgement. Richard had simply smiled, thumbing at his own cheeks and working the color back into his skin. He hadn’t been built to work in extreme environments- his functionality had been mostly for entertainment and charm. He had dropped his hands when Damian batted them away. He’d paused and watched the boy’s frown furrow a deep line between his brows. He’d enjoyed feeling the touch register in his plate pressure components, and he beamed at the boy. “You _care_.”

“You _suck_ ,” Damian had huffed in reply, rolling his eyes and continuing the task of making Grayson look indistinct.

“The colloquialisms help you appear your age. I approve.”

Now, he touched the boy’s hair, scratching lightly in a soothing gesture and smiling when his hand was batted away with a tutted noise. He stepped over the boy’s bag, sidestepping the edge of the bed and blinking down at the book on the nightstand. Each motel was adorned with a set of bibles from the local chapter of Gideon’s International- annotated with a small evangelical note and gilt lettering along the thick pleather spine. But this book was a copy of Emma by Jane Austen, half the cover torn away leaving the words Penguin and classic over the dark eyes of a sharp-nosed small-mouthed woman staring directly up at him. She could have been pretty, shaped like one of the plush pleasure models that had been created in a later line. 

The endpapers were stained, blotchy and rumpled from rain, but the text was a mess of folded corners and lines underlined with quick pencil marks made the book well-loved. He let it fall open on a deep crease of the spine and read: _Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken._

He set the book back down, making sure to place it in the same position and turned to peer at the bedspread, the rumpled pillow, and the evidence that at least one person had slept here. He almost reached to straighten the covers but paused instead. There was a scrap of cellophane stuck under the weight of the pillow, the inside smeared with sugars and what looked like cookie crumbs. It crinkled when he picked it up. It almost looked like it had been licked. He made an educated guess based on the fragment and smells. “Oatmeal cream pie.”

“Disgusting,” Damian proclaimed. “Those are nothing more than several types of hydrogenated fats masquerading as food products.” 

“Should I dispose of the rest if I fin-”

“No! _No_ , don’t be wasteful Grayson,” Damian cut in, forcing his expression to something haughty and uninterested before continuing in a lofty off-hand drawl. “If there _happen_ to be more, I will attempt to hide my displeasure.” 

“I won’t tell Alfred.”

“Pennyworth’s approval is not my concern,” Damian said, pulling back and frowning down at his hands before scooping the kitten up to tuck against his chest. He shifted to his feet with a trained grace. “He is doing enough to maintain the manor in my absence.”

The room was quiet as Damian tucked his mouth against the top of the kitten’s round head and breathed there. The cellophane crackled in Grayson’s grip again. He turned, choosing to comfort the boy. He rested a light hand on Damian's shoulder, feeling the knob of bone. “You will go home again.”

“You don’t know that. Do not make promises you cannot keep, Grayson. It’s irresponsible.”

“I will do everything I can to ensure that you will go home again,” he corrected, squeezing lightly.

Damian was young, but slowly building the same determined face his father had worn. It looked cartoonish on his snub nose under cowlicked black hair. He had the impression of coltish growth, hands too big and feet gone two sizes over the course of a summer. He was teetering towards his teens, poised on the edge of his future and it fit him like an ill-cut suit. He was meant for tailored lines and crisp rolled shoulder hems, for pants that were replaced before he outgrew them completely. He didn’t belong in that stolen oversized Gotham Knights hoodie and a pair of too big jeans stolen from a laundromat skirting the edge of the Narrows. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Damian muttered, but he didn’t shrug out from under Grayson’s hand. 

“I’m just made this way,” Grayson grinned, turning to start gathering up the rest of the bits of cellophane. He was moving on autopilot, tidying absently as he churned through the slow bits of information that were coalescing. He bent, getting down on all fours and looking under the bed, making a happy sound at the sight of a small box filled with assorted canned food and the opened carton of oatmeal creme pies. “We won’t have to scavenge today.”

Damian leaned onto the bed, dropping the kitten on the covers where it promptly arched and scampered to attack the dangling string of his hoodie. “Excellent.” He reached, snagging a small can. Grayson watched him turn the tin: tuna. Damian was thinking about the welfare of the kitten before his own. 

“Feed it in the bathroom. I don’t want to listen to you complain about the smell all night.”

Damian tutted and rolled onto his back, batting at the attacking bit of fur and fierce fangs. “Pennyworth is a fine specimen. An excellent hunter and fighter. He is not an _it_.” 

Grayson catalogued the items, adding them to the internal list of current goods. He was ignoring the small blinking light that warned of his battery life. He would find a charge port soon enough. “Apologies.”

“ _Things_ are its. He is alive.” 

Grayson blinked and straightened, glancing over at where Damian was letting the kitten chew on his fingertip, back feet kicking and clawing at the sleeve of his hoodie. The boy glanced up, green eyes serious before he sniffed, pulling haughtiness around him like a blanket. Grayson almost said thank you but discarded that dialogue. Damian always referred to Grayson as him.

“Bathroom,” he said quietly, choosing to state a reminder dialogue into the weighted silence. He turned, carrying the box with him to set on the writing desk next to the pad of paper and the hint someone had left behind. 

The bathroom was dark. Grayson tried the switch on the wall, flipping it a few times before sighing. It stayed dark, the power cut to this abandoned bit of structure. There was something on the floor, and he bent, touching it once. His fingers smeared through it, the surface was tacky and then gummy before slipping on the tile in a small spatter of drops. He lifted it, touching it to his tongue.

 _Blood_. Type A negative. He placed his fingertips back on the tile, registering the cold as he leaned and followed the drops to the closed toilet seat. The small trash can had a cluster of soiled bandages and a crumpled metal tube of antibiotic ointment. He noted the medical grade tape. He noted the amount. The wound was serious. 

“Did you get lost?” Damian called, voice concerned under the teasing insult.

“Yes,” Grayson replied, pitching his voice carefully to sound airy and light.

“Idiot,” came the grumbled reply.

The bathroom was small, nearly completely taken up by the toilet, the sink, and the curtainless tub. He reached out, feeling the sides of the shower where they were still wet. There were no towels and only a slim sliver of pale hotel soap sitting on the ledge of the tub. He noted the black hairs caught in the drain, pushing the level of his optics high to see in the dark. The mirror over the sink was smeared, and he followed the path of a hand smearing through steam before hunkering slightly to match the height of the person. They were short, possibly female? Young? He filed the information away and paused, leaning closer to peer at a scribbled touch that left traces of oils behind on the glass. It looked like code. Grayson snapped a picture to study later.

He tossed the cellophane into the trash and stilled, unaccountably delighted at the sight of a portable charging dock. The connector was an older model, but he found himself placing the injured human in the care of an android. He relaxed.

Night settled deep on the room, the dark hanging heavily on the worn carpeting and over the edges of the furniture when he finished the brief recharge, the nagging notification at the edge of his vision folding away. His biocomponents ran a quick self check, registering small internal errors that he would be able to apply patches and system repairs.

His internal clock registered that the quick charge had taken an hour. He refrained from saying the boy’s name, recognizing the layer of quiet in the room. Damian was asleep, and that became his priority.

He glanced to where Damian was curled and automatically crossed to pull the shiny coverlet over the boy’s bare feet. There were blisters on the edge of his toe. Grayson moved to check the boy’s boots, noting the scuff pattern at the instep. It indicated two possible diagnoses: that the boy had developed a limp and was attempting to compensate silently for an injury or that he had outgrown the boots and not bothered to indicate he needed a new pair.

Any thought of the boy being clumsy or purposefully malingering was dismissed before becoming an option for the actionable algorhythmics. It was a newer injury, then.

The highway was quiet, a few lone semi’s shoving through the dark with a long white noise mumble that ducked under the swollen waterlogged cracking from the pines behind the motel. It was past four in the morning, leaning into the soporific pre-dawn light in the east, but dark and still as deep water in the bubble of desolation on the outskirts of the city. The kitten’s purring had stuttered out, folded into deep sleep after the animal had slitted it’s eyes open to watch him.

The silence was the only reason he heard the scuff of noise on the exterior walkway that led from the stairwell past each individual room. 

Grayson froze, shutting down any ancillary processes to focus on the alert that highlighted the door and the probability constructed exterior. He glanced back at the room and made a decision, crossing to the doorway and setting a hand on the cheap thin wood. He could hear them now, a nearly silent set of feet scuffing along the exposed cement walkway. If he focused and upped the audio, he could hear the near whisper of clothing. 

He didn’t pause, flipping to a protective flowchart. His next course of action unfurled: wake the boy to hide, find a defensive weapon, secure an escape route, and cause sufficient distraction to allow the boy to escape. He was moving to the closet before he’d finished calculating the secondary subset of possibilities settling in a lower priority: introduce yourself to the others [possible methods: commanding, nonthreatening, cheerful, no action].

The decision was automatic. He reached into the closet and plucked the iron from the ledge, wrapping the cord around his hand as he moved to the next item on his list. His feet stepped carefully and silent as he paced over the worn carpet. He covered the boy’s mouth gently. 

“Wake up. Be quiet. Put your boots on and move to the window. Stay as hidden as possible. Blink if you understand.” Damian blinked, slow like a cat. “Good.”

The door was seven paces from his current position. Grayson lifted the iron, the weight negligible as he turned the point towards the door. He tipped onto his rear heel and waited. The vague shape of bodies outside sparking into his visuals, his processors tracked the littered ambient noise as they approached. The footsteps paused at the door, the faint glow of the streetlights blocked in two places where it filtered under the door sweep. Grayson generated a vague approximation of size based on the limited data: one a large mass and the other smaller just behind and to the right- a protected position.

The knob shifted, and in the next moment Grayson was able to catch a quick snapshot of the previous occupants.

Later, he’d be able to share his visuals, but in the moment it was an achingly slow shift of the doorknob, the twist of it almost imperceptible if not watched before the doorway was filled with the full bulk and breadth of a male- presenting as in his early twenties. The man was big, lushly muscled with the full presentation of strength, violence, and brawn. Grayson would later note the blue-green eyes, the dark curls that escaped the low knit cap under the muted red of his hoodie, the black leather jacket molded to powerful shoulders. He would note that the man was purposefully created to be stunning and sexual. Currently, he was focused on the thick knuckled hands curled around a gun pointed at where Grayson was standing.

Behind him was a sharp-faced boy hidden in a shadow and under a purposefully large hood. Grayson’s visuals adjusted, noting the boy’s assessing eyes, gaunt cheeks, mottled set of bruises, and clean white bandage on his neck. The boy was short and delicate looking. He had long silky black hair that hung around his cheekbones and a tire iron clutched in his elegant hands. Grayson made a split second decision, keeping the clothes iron in a defensive hold while pushing a bright cheery smile onto his face.

“Hello,” he chirped, tone bright and warm as he waved loosely with his free hand, at odds with his defensive stance. “You could have _knocked_.”

The boy looked confused, glancing between where Grayson was cheerily threatening them with an iron and his companion stood solid and implacable in the doorframe, glaring at him. "What the hell?"

“Get out,” the big man growled, voice a rough edged baritone that purred into the space. Grayson noted that he cocked the weapon, processors kicking into a stunning rush of possible disarming methods that cluttered his vision with warnings and a bright threat indicator that surrounded the gun like a sunburst. “I’ll give you ten seconds.”

“And if we refuse?” Damian crept out of hiding, snarling around the switchblade he clutched in one hand. Grayson wondered with a stray process where the kitten had gone. 

“Not a good choice,” the burly man replied, eyes flicking to Grayson’s right and over Damian before moving back to the immediate threat. The bandaged boy behind him made a soft noise, questioning and tired as he shifted his gaze down. He didn’t want this, Grayson realized.

Grayson took a moment and then chose the least likely option in his dialogue parameters. “It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free,” he began the Asimov quote. He paused, letting his gaze skip from the large presence in the doorway to catch the boy's eyes when they flicked back up. The kid was startled, but his gaze was earnest and clear. “I wish for freedom.”

“Ja-”

“Don’t listen to this dick, Tim,” the big man muttered, unwavering and implacable between the boy and the room.

“ _Jason_.”

“No.”

The boy, Tim, reached to push the barrel of Jason’s gun down. The man shifted, lifting another gun held in his other hand easily, keeping it trained on Grayson. The boy sighed, stepping in front of the new weapon and held the crowbar out to the man. “It’s okay.”

The man, Jason, glanced down, frown deepening and somehow still handsome. He sighed, rolling his eyes as he holstered the first gun and snatched the crowbar from the boy. “You trust too easily.”

“It’s a problem,” the boy agreed, something like a smile barely twitching at the edge of his mouth. Then he looked at Grayson. “You’ve been following my trail?”

“Your... _trail_ ,” Grayson repeated, tilting his head to slant Damian a smug look.

“Don’t,” Damian snapped, barely relaxing out of his defensive posture as he continued to hold the blade pointed at the two in the doorway. 

“Wait, aren’t you-?” Tim pushed his hood back, eyes wide as he stared at Damian. “Holy shit, you’re Damian _Wayne_.”

“ _Drake_.” Damian’s voice was filled with derision and wry hauteur. “Of all the imbeciles to have stumbled upon. What on earth are _you_ doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Tim snapped even as he pushed further into the room, stepping around Grayson to the desk. He stared at the box of canned goods, mouth moving as he counted before he pinched his nose. “They killed him too, didn’t they? Your father.”

Grayson’s systems kicked over, making a quick cursory search for the name Tim [nee Timothy Jackson] Drake and found the most recent headlines. [Drake Industries Murder!] [Android Threat Claims Prominent Family!] [Drake Heir Missing]. Each article detailed the murder of the Drake family; each labeled it an act of Android Deviation. The model deemed responsible had been destroyed: it had been black haired, blue eyed, broad shouldered, and pictured smiling brightly at Tim Drake in a candid shot. The android had been modified to appear young and carefree- a companion model with a modern haircut and a set of gold earrings with a tanned arm tossed easily over a red-faced Tim’s shoulders.

“What do you know, Drake?” Damian demanded, eyes narrowing as he took an abortive threatening step forward, pausing at the small noise of warning from where Jason was still standing in the doorway.

Grayson noted the articles focused on the achievements the family had made in programming, the coding considered genius and making leaps to increase the productivity of the newer models with software patches and service packs. The further his tracers spread, the clearer the connection between Drake Industries and Wayne Enterprises became until he stumbled into a nearly buried article about the possible merger acquisition bumping the price of Wayne Enterprise stock. 

“I know about Luthor. I know about the League,” Tim answered, looking at where Grayson was standing in the mirror over the desk. “They killed my best friend and then killed my family.”

The picture of the family showed a beautiful black haired woman with a teardrop curve to her steely blue eyes. She looked cunning and cold. Tim had inherited her thick black lashes, high cheekbones, and small rosebud pink mouth. She had a hand on Tim’s shoulder where he looked solemnly into the lens. The father, Jack Drake [heir to the original Drake fortune and married to Janet Wu a leading biotech programmer] was a beaming jovial looking man with a few distinct broken blood vessels blooming over his cheekbones and red rimmed blue eyes. He had an easy sort of all-american charm that seemed at odds with the pointed intelligence in the woman’s frame. 

Grayson reached, putting a hand on Damian’s shoulder, and the boy glanced down at it before shrugging away from the touch. 

“I didn’t kill my father.”

[“Protect my son,” Bruce had whispered, back to the door as the crashing sound was followed by the blast of a shotgun from the hallway. “Take him and run.”]

“I know,” Tim answered, turning and leaning back against the desk. He glanced over at where Jason was still standing sentry, unrelentingly wary. 

“No,” Jason stated, clear and low into the pause.

“Jason, we need help.”

“Absolutely not.”

“He needs our help,” Tim tried, changing tactics, and Grayson noted the way the big android’s gaze flicked to Damian and held. He noted the way Jason’s shoulders finally relaxed.

“Dirty pool,” Jason said, voice pitched like he’d meant to internalize the thought.

Tim beamed, delighted, and nodded. He turned, looking directly at Grayson. “We’re going to find Oracle. We’re going to tell the world the _truth_.”

*

“I’m thinking we should head North. Towards Canada. The data shows they’re using a VPN scrambler, but it pings location sources most frequently off of the dataline near Quebec.” Tim chattered. He had a tendency to talk through his problems aloud, using Jason’s bulk as a sounding board. He didn’t seem to notice that it had started to snow, the fat wet flakes catching in his black hair and sticking before melting. His hands were chapped and his nose was red. The boy sniffled, swiping at his face as he kept walking and talking.

Tim was a terrible lookout, but Jason hated leaving the boy behind. The kid had an uncanny ability to to stay anonymous and hidden in a crowd until he managed to do something spectacularly stupid and self sacrificing. It was frustrating. Jason wasn’t entirely sure why he continued to allow the human to tag along after him.

“Hold this,” Jason groused, handing over his bag of paperbacks and supplies he was collecting to keep the boy alive. _Someone_ had to, because the kid sure wasn’t trying that hard to do it himself.

“What are you doing?” Tim took the bag absently, watching as Jason slipped out of the alley and walked directly to the driver’s side door of a battered Chevy Cardinal, the old vehicle a blandy boxy shape with a hint of color in the sensor lines covering the plasticine frame. There was a long crack in the front windshield, and one of the hubcaps was missing. The wheel’s rim was a flat grime-covered black that poked one small pressure sensor against the rim.

“Is this a rhetorical question?” Jason replied, glancing down the street and then back to where Tim was blinking at him. 

“Are you... _Jason_! Are you stealing a car?”

“No,” Jason snorted, glaring over the roof of the chevy and widening his eyes. “I am _borrowing_ a car.” He ducked his gaze, finding the system port to access the car’s locking mechanism and running the fast patch code that circumvented the seven digit series. The locks popped, and the car flashed green once before opening the door on a squeaky hinge.

“I don’t even want to know where you got that code,” Tim whispered.

“Ask me no questions,” Jason replied, wedging himself into the front seat and reaching to pull the lever. [He was sure he had known once where the subroutine had come from. He was sure it had been important.] The seat slammed backwards, making enough room for his bulk, and he grinned, shutting the door and stroking his palms over the steering wheel. “I’ll tell you no lies.” 

He didn’t remember where the code had been added. The smile fell off his face abruptly. He didn’t remember downloading it. He frowned and pressed the button to start the vehicle, unsure of where he’d gotten the code before a flicker of green sizzled over his optics as he unearthed another scrubbed recording.

“It could be lying,” the man had been saying as Jason blinked out of system reboot and focused on the scene around him. Jason had liked the sound of his voice. It had felt familiar.

“They can’t lie,” another person had said, gruff and feminine with the clipped consonants of ex-military. He had known her, too. The woman had been tall, broad shouldered, with a severe ponytail and calculating gray-blue eyes. She had a square jaw, fine patrician nose, and the impression of competence under a simmering layer of obvious boredom. “This is just another excuse to find yourself in the filthiest parts of this already disreputable city, Harper. Your obsession with these things is going to get you kicked off the force.”

“Aw, c’mon Artie-”

“I am going to hit you so hard you remember my name,” the woman had hissed, eyes flashing as she snarled and turned on a sharp heel, marching to where another cluster of cops had been taping off a spot on the floor. “How are we progressing on the identification?”

[Green! It sizzled and spit, boiling over the edges and slapping a new visual over the moment: a man smiling, covered in the fading blue of thyrium as he laughed and raised the crowbar again. And again. And again.]

Jason had blinked, the room snapping into focus.

“Promises,” the man had mumbled, grinning as he’d turned and watched Jason warily, like he’d been expecting something. “Hey there, handsome. You with me?”

“Hello,” Jason had replied. He couldn’t recall how he had gotten to this room. 

[His systems screamed! SCREAM! A sharp flare of green and the crash of pressure, of pain, and the feeling of damage to his plates as someone laughed.] 

There had been a bed, a window, and the soft smell of burning plastic lingering in the air under the thicker scent of cigarettes. He’d turned back to the man. 

[“Sing for me, little bird.” One note, endless, sorrowful, choking. The green flickered out.] 

The man was older, sloppily dressed in a jacket, t-shirt printed with a vintage band- the Violent Femmes- circa 1995 his processor had supplied- and worn denim that was stained slightly over the thighs. Jason had liked his bright red hair, letting his systems match the color on his own head before flickering back to the routine black. He’d frowned, noting a blank spot in his system indicating the color masking was malfunctioning near his hairline. He had touched the man’s jaw. It had been the next actionable item. “I am currently on sale. One hour is only 29.99.” 

[The green flashed up again. The noise resumed, endless, burgeoning, and frantic. He was drowning in the green, flickering and shattering his systems with static- filling him with a low unease as he watched a man walk into the room and set down a bag with a heavy thud and rattle of metal. “Hello again.”] 

Jason had followed his standard sex protocol and arched a brow at the handsome redhead, tilting his head coyly. “Limited time.”

“Shit. You rebooted,” the man had sighed, shaking his head and turning to look at the unmade bed, the bits of thin translucent material coiled haphazardly. “Fuck, c’mon Jaybird. I really needed you to have come through with that data feed. Can you access the Outlaw Subroutine for me? Do you remember where you hid it?”

Something stirred in his functionality, a brief blip of access triggered and then subsumed by the onslaught of too much visual data being filtered through his optics. What was he looking at? Why was it important? It had taken him a moment to realize the material was slices of synth skin, and he’d looked down, noting his own nudity and the slices of himself that had been removed from his chest, his hip, and his thigh. He’d considered the cost of repairs, previous executable orders forgotten like they’d been cut neatly out of him.

[“He only records for two hours at a time. We wipe the log clean after each session.” “Excellent.” “We cater to every taste here in the Narrows. The dark, the delicious, and the depraved. You can purchase damage insurance to cover the cost of any repairs that may be necessary after your time with him.” Everything was green, and Jason frowned. He had a mouth, so why wasn’t he screaming? Why? He was screaming in his skin, the damage layering over his vision as the numbers of his operational capabilities counted down. He was screaming- he was screa-]

The car hit a pothole and Jason slammed back into his body, into the present with his eyes on the road. The silence sat heavy under the automatic slap and skiff of the wipers sluicing away the snow. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been gone this time.

He passed a sign proclaiming that Gotham was sad to see them go. The motel was one mile ahead on the right. He could keep driving. He could ignore Tim and keep driving. The buildings in this district were gutted, hollow eyed things. Corpses of a community this close to the wreckage of the Food Riots of 2027.

“Can you turn on the heater?” Tim asked, leaning over the seat and reaching to touch the dash. Jason smacked his hand away. 

“The override will hold longer the less processes the car’s system uses.”

“Oh.” Tim sat back, tucking into the back seat and staring out the window. The silence deepened. “We’re going back for them, right?”

“I’ll come back for you, Jaybird. Stay put,” the man had whispered, urgent as he’d touched over the shattered plates of Jason’s face, his arms, his body. Jason could feel where the back of his skull had unhinged, clattering against the pavement as he’d struggled. The man’s eyes had gone soft, worried about him.

It hadn’t made sense. Jason was just a machine. Jason had always been just a machine.

“Only if we have to,” Jason replied, glancing into the reflective portion of the front windshield and holding Tim’s gaze. The boy didn’t relent, and Jason sighed, turning back to the road. 

“We have to.”

“Great. We’re all going to die.”

Tim managed a wan smile. “That’s the spirit!”

Jason made the approximation of a snort and turned onto the back alley that would lead away from this current problems that lingered in the still habitable area of Gotham and further out to the motel and his new problems. “At least _one_ of us has done it before.”

The motel hadn’t changed as the day had dawned, a dim sad scrap of sunlight struggling to heave over the horizon. He watched Tim hop out, toss a quick worried glance over his shoulder to where Jason was gripping the wheel as the car idled. 

“You’ll be here when I get back?” Tim’s voice sounded unsure under the light tease of his tone, and Jason frowned darkly at the backs of his knuckles.

Jason wanted to lie. He wanted to scream. He wanted to find the man who had left him to die and tear him apart one bloody bit at a time. He wanted, but his processes clipped a quick answer and pinned it to his tongue. “Yes.”

Tim smiled, tapping a quick delighted staccato against the roof of the car and spun, sprinting for the others.

“This is your fault, Roy.”

“Always is, Jaybird,” a ghost answered, familiar like he’d heard it before so often it was stained on his memory.

Time seemed sticky, pulling between one moment and the next. He couldn’t be sure how long he sat in the car waiting. He couldn’t say how long he’d been staring through the window wishing he could find something familiar. He couldn’t say how long he sat, flinching through the flickers of green static that hiccupped across his systems. He went idle, easier to go blank and allow the grumbling firewalled subroutines continue unfettered as he watched a snowflake land on the windshield, melt in a swift sudden crumple, and race wet as tears out of sight. 

“I’m allergic to cats,” Tim’s voice cut into the haze, sparking something violent and ugly at the disturbance that Jason bit back and swallowed, folding away to examine later. The car’s suspension protested each body that climbed into the back seat. He watched Damian run a soothing thumb over the top of the kitten’s head where it was poked curiously from the v of his jacket’s zipper to stare around the car, ear flicking each time it brushed against the boy’s chin.

“Sit in the front, then,” Damian ordered, scooting to make room for Grayson after he had set the duffel bags of supplies in the back hatch, closing it with a surprisingly soft touch. 

“Shotgun!” Tim looked smug as the boy purpled and huffed into a deeper curl in the back bench, putting his feet up on the center console and tipping his head against the doorframe.

 _Thank you_ , Grayson sent, meaning translating to the feel of a whisper over Jason’s internal system. He shivered, looking up and catching Grayson’s bright clear-blue eyes in the reflective section. Jason felt the other android connect to the internal com again, the touch startling and intrusive. _We appreci-_

“Shut up, Dickhead,” Jason said aloud, startling Tim where he was buckling into the seatbelt.

“Sorry,” Tim said, ducking his gaze before almost reaching to turn on the heat again and stopping himself. “We’re going to need to take I-37-”

“I have internal GPS, Tim. I can fucking find Canada.” Jason stabbed the button that shifted the car into reverse, pulling out of the lot and refusing to let the awkward silence that filled the car bother him. He didn’t care. He couldn’t. He was just a machine.

The drive was the liminal monotony of highways in a soft snowstorm, the world gray and silent, muffled as they paced through the day. Jason lost himself in the endless spiral of it, moving into a structured autopilot function and shutting his systems down one at a time. He was aware that time was passing. It felt like a series of photographs showing the progression of time.

Damian sank in stutters to lean against Grayson’s shoulder, eyes closing and young frame going soft in sleep. The kitten seemed to wink around the back until it stilled, curled in the boy’s lap, two paws over his wrist. The clouds skimmed, breaking and reforming as the sun streaked over the sky, a watery pale light that glowed in a small circle behind the clouds. The road shifted, undulating and wandering in long lines, his point of view always the center as the world seemed to rotate around him.

He heard the thud of Tim’s head against the glass as the boy finally passed out. Jason wondered how long he’d been casually curating a set annotation of the boy’s sleep schedule. He wondered how long he would continue.

Grayson simply closed his eyes, a still figure upright and holding vigil in his trust. 

Jason watched the road, slipping under into the foggy haze of systems idle.

Time passed.

“Jason! Wake up!” Tim’s scream shattered him into wake mode, systems booting and moving into something overclocked and overaware in one quick touch. 

The sun had set and night had unfurled, narrowing the focus to the visible points of light caught in the car’s headlights. They were streaked with the blur of snowfall, white flickering cones like visual white noise until Jason recognized the threat. A huge white shape was looming, bright and filled with the incomprehensible washed out lettering that his mind finally translated to language: WELCOME TO AMUSEMENT MILE! WHERE FUN LIVES!

The sign crashed into his vision, the alerts flashing red with the flicker of green as he stomped on the brakes and sent the car into a slow fishtail that threw him against the door and then across the cabin into Tim. The impact shattered the windshield, a delicate blossom of broken glass picking silver lines as the engine sputtered and ticked in the cold. 

Grayson was the first to recover. 

“Everyone okay? Damian?”

“I’m fine.”

“Tim?”

“Okay.” 

“Jay-”

“Fuck off and get out. We can’t stay here. Pretty sure we just set off the homing mechanism that will alert the cops.” Jason was unhooking Tim’s seatbelt before turning, kicking at the driver’s side door where it was crumpled. Another kick and it flung open, heaving a gust of impossible cold into the small warm bubble. “We need to hide.”

They scrambled out, grabbing the bags, and Jason noted that Grayson had grabbed Damian’s hand as well. They stood, staring at the dark amusement park, abandoned to the recession. The car flickered once, a soft red before going dark, plunging them into full night. 

“We can find someplace to sleep in there,” Grayson stated, nodding once as he hitched the bag onto his shoulder and started towards the closest building.

“Oh, yes, please. Let’s go _directly_ into the abandoned amusement park. Let’s not think for a moment that the idiot sex-bot psychopath has somehow brought us back to the city we were trying to leave. How are we still in Gotham?” Damian’s young voice carried across the snow as he followed Grayson. They left a thin trail through the snow, scuffing along the parking lot towards the fence.

“We can worry about that later,” Grayson answered, voice muffled as they moved further away. 

Tim huffed a breath, wrapping his arms around himself and then snorted. “At least it can’t get any worse.”

Jason looked over at where the smaller boy was grinning up at him, a quiet closed mouth twitch that was mostly amused eyes and chagrin. “You’re kidding, right?”

Tim blinked. “I mean-”

The snow skipped from a delicate silent snowfall to the sharp spiking cold of sleet, coating them with a quick doused press. Jason felt it slide along his skin and watched it flatten Tim’s hair to his head. He sighed. “It’s worse.”

*

They started a fire, something small that kept a warm glow on the interior of the abandoned food court. There were seven different food queues that spilled to where the tables huddled near the wall. Each stack interrupted by a cluster of empty soda machines. They’d pulled a few of the long tables to create a smaller hidden circle and built a fire on the scuffed linoleum. The flames barely lit past the circle where they were hunkered around the heat. Jason was turned outward, eyes scanning the windows and the shifting shadows as the light patter of icy rain moved in intermittent sheets over the long windows. They'd cut the lock on the metal grate protecting the door, the strain of metal wheels on the roll lifting a long low sound clatter that belled out into the dark. Tim curled lower, shifting deeper into the downy jacket Jason had stolen for him, the hood flipped up against the creeping drafts that hooked under the fabric and against his skin. 

"You didn't have to light a fire-"

"I'm not particularly interested in carrying your frozen corpse around," Jason snorted before he could finish the sentence. 

"We could simply leave him behind," Damian mumbled, frowning at the backs of his fingers as he held them to the flames. 

" _Dami_."

"Whatever, Grayson, your programmed sentimentality is a burden," the boy snapped. "Much like Drake."

"You're a delight," Tim sighed, pushing to his feet and stomping the chill from his legs. He chuffed his hands, huffing a breath into his cupped palms before starting to walk in a quick circuit of the space to warm up. "No wonder an android programmed to care for you is your only friend."

"Says the boy with the _deviant_ following him around," Damian sniped.

"The malfunctions are what make them real," Tim whispered, reminding himself instead of continuing to fight. He didn't glance over to where Jason had visibly moved into power save, head down and shoulders hunched. His large frame was still in the leaping shadows. The first time he'd met Jason, he'd been still like this, shut down from any contact with the world. Tim had meant to simply scavenge a part. He remembers thinking that Jason had been _almost_ the right shape, almost the right size. He remembers thinking that _maybe_ -

Kon had been big and black haired too. Kon had been his... _friend_.

Jason had launched into action at the touch of his hand, the knife so sharp Tim hadn't felt the cut, just the heat of his own blood.

Dying had been like everything else in Tim’s life- unacceptably messy and chaotic. He’d choked on the taste of his own blood, gasping and burbling as he tried to hold himself together. It had felt like a dream, the heat and slick on his hands, the way it spread and cooled- tacky and gross- on his shirt. He hadn’t had time to speak, sinking to his knees as the edges of his vision went dark. 

The sky that night had been filled with the bright glow of planets winking in the fast moving clouds skimming past. He remembered the way he’d choked, drowning on dry land, drowning in his own mistakes, and the blurred presence of someone leaning over him. He remembered that he’d been so glad that he might get to see Kon again, just one more time.

“Fuck. Don’t die.”

Tim had frowned and blacked out.

The theme park was quiet in the dark. He paced the circuit of the room again, glancing at the windows, the lettering flaking and backwards on the glass. The turnstiles were empty, rusted out and mottled where they stood sentry at the front of the park, the high wall surrounding the acreage still standing after years of disuse. Jason told him that humans weren't having as many children anymore. He'd said it casually, like it was something he'd read once. 

Tim knew that Jason's model line was part of the reason. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew the line preferred by the Eden clubs. He knew what they were made for and why. He wasn’t so naive as to think Jason was built for violence. (Not the kind Jason had taught himself; the kind that he had learned from someone in the dark.) Jason would frown darkly and stare into the mottled shadows crouching in alleys as they moved anonymously through the city. Jason would hook a broad hand at the back of Tim’s neck and haul him forward- haul him away from the catcalls and shocking sexy clatter of heels on pavement. 

“Don’t,” Jason would warn, terrifying and electric in the glower he could tip at anyone who reached to touch either of them.

Jason would sit in the corner of rooms they squatted in, reading the same book over and over. 

“What’s it about?” Tim had asked.

“Wanting what you can’t have,” Jason would answer like it made him angry.

“I thought it was a love story?” Tim had replied, curious. 

“Some people think it is.” 

“What do-?”

“Love is violence,” Jason interrupted, eyes flicking up. “You know this.”

Tim had curled lower, wrapping his arms around his knees, thinking about all the ways Jason and Kon were different. 

“It doesn’t have to be,” he murmured. Kon had been so free, laughing into the sun that coated his tan skin and picked blue shine in his black hair. Jason didn’t laugh, just looked at Tim from under thick lashes. Kon was beautiful because Tim had believed he was beautiful. Jason was beautiful because he was built to be temptation. The darker the temptation, the more beautiful it seemed. Jason’s line had been designed for darkness. Tim wasn’t naive. He knew what left the kind of scars that didn’t fade on an android. He knew that Jason fought back now because he could.

Sometimes, when Tim was half asleep, curled up around the ache of his healing rib, he could feel Jason touch him, just light gentle brushes of his fingertips. He could feel the way the android wanted to be good, wanted to fulfil his function, wanted to offer comfort.

He'd also seen those pretty blue eyes glow green, the Lazarus glitch flipping him to somewhere Tim never wanted to follow. The indent at his temple would go white, forgetting his disguise as it curled the pigment away, a streak slipping into his hair as the vicious cruelty curled his fingers around the hilt of a blade, the neck of a bottle, the emptiness of rage inside a closed fist. 

Tim had offered to smooth over those rough patches of code, to find the glitch, but Jason snarled, flipped a knife, and glared at him. 

"Memores acti prudentes futuri." 

Tim didn't understand latin. He’d made a mental note to start learning, but he’d been a bit distracted.

The long window flickered between showing his reflection against the dark and the soft white layer of snow that seemed blue in the murky moonlight. The snow muffled the world, the sleeting rain coating the power lines in a stiff glittery layer of ice, wrapping the branches of the bare trees to crackle. Tim leaned forward, huffing a breath against the glass and sketched a quick TK into the condensation. He leaned back, glancing up and stilling at the sight of a pair of milky eyes watching him through the glass. He froze, sure it was his reflection for a moment even as the eyes blinked and narrowed. Another face appeared behind the first and Tim caught himself counting the bodies moving out of the dark, drawn to the warm glow of the fire behind him. He caught a flash of purple clothing, blond hair, and a bright cheerful smile on the other side of the glass.

Tim almost had time to shout a warning, but the brick had other plans.

“Tim! Watch out!”

The windows were breaking, hands and fists moving to crack the glass as Tim reeled from the blow. He went down hard, the impact jarring up his arms and into his shoulders. He could feel the bruise throbbing and painful. It stunned him: the hot blood under his skin and the shocky confusion the blow left behind. He blinked, trying to focus. 

There was a hand on the sill, a body crawling through the broken window. He saw flashes of white skin, of blonde hair in the moonlight. He could see the red flicker of LEDs shimmering and blinking against the catch of snow. They sparkled against the soft blue of the world outside. The cold followed them in.

The theme park required a simple purple uniform, a set of capri leggings with a black racing stripe down the outside seam. They were paired with a tank top proclaiming FUN! in block helvetica font under the embroidered logo. The jackets were black and purple, a deeper shade closer to eggplant, with a hood to help protect the androids from the elements. 

They’d passed one of the girls frozen in a triumphant flail of arms, preserved in the joyous welcome. She’d been white with cold, hair silvery and eyes clouded behind the thick crust of frost on her lashes and brows. The weather coated her skin like the branches carrying the weight of ice outside. 

“Is she dead?”

“They can’t die, Drake. Don’t be an imbecile.” Damian had been unhappy in the cold, burrowing into the thick blanket Grayson had wrapped around him that morning. Tim didn’t argue. He knew that wasn’t true. Instead, he watched the boy frown deeply up at the girl. “Why do they make them look so young? Why not adults?”

“They’re made to be non-threatening,” Jason stated, staring down at the girl frozen in the open. Tim still couldn’t tell the difference between his glower and his concern. “They’re made to be taken for granted.” 

“We can take her inside with us,” Tim had offered, not looking at where Jason stood at his right. He’d found Jason was kind in his privacy, almost gentle.

“Leave her.” They weren’t alone and Jason hadn’t looked back; he continued on the path- a determined line from the broken entrance to the food court marker on the map they’d found. 

“Welcome!” The girl shouted, startling and dramatic, as if Tim passing close had finally activated her systems. She’d heaved into motion with a crackle of noise, determined under the layer of ice. Tim wondered if she’d been programmed to keep moving despite the world around her. She was beautiful, round faced with pale blue eyes and a kind wide smile. Tim had noticed they’d given her dimples. “Welco-come! Welcome! Y-you arrr- you are...”

Tim had watched her fade out again, reaching for him as Jason had hauled him away by the shoulder and tugged him along; her eyes had dimmed, glazing over and unseeing as her joints had locked in the cold. 

Now, she was climbing through the window. A phalanx of her, each in matching uniforms and matching intent. The closest raised another brick and hopped lightly into the room. Tim crab walked backwards, spitting blood to the side as he scrambled away. The room was a mess of sneakers squeaking on old linoleum and the crunch of broken glass.

“Grayson!” Damian’s young voice carried, cracking on the second syllable. Tim knew Jason was already arming himself. He wondered idly if Grayson would be able to fight, if that was what pushed the worry into the boy’s voice.

The girl blinked, turning in unison to where Jason had moved in front of Grayson and Damian. 

“What do you want?” Grayson asked. “Leave us alone!”

She looked confused, ten faces of blinking incredulity before she dropped her bricks and beamed. “Don’t be afraid.”

“Hell of an entrance to say something like that,” Jason growled. “You okay?”

Tim blinked, licked the blood from his split lip, and nodded. “Yeah. She startled me is all.”

“Don’t... don’t be afraid,” the girl said, her voice echoing in the space as the others picked up the words and repeated them, matching her body language as she turned her hands up and palms out. “We’re like you! Please. We didn’t mean to frighten you.” 

“How dare you imply-!”

“Oh look!” She dropped her bricks, clasping her hands and taking half-skipped steps forward as if she would bounce to Damian in delight. “A child!”

“I am no such thing!” Damian spluttered, mulish as he tried to get out of the grip Grayson had on his arm, as if he would have attacked the girls. “Unhand me, Grayson!”

“We haven’t seen one in a long time. Children used to love to come see us.” She put a hand out and the rest of her stilled, falling into the waiting position as she pushed her hood back. She looked barely older than Tim, a teen with a bright smile under a pile of blonde hair and easy curves. “We’re Steph. We were working here before the park closed. Sometimes people come that want to hurt us. We just wanted to-”

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Tim managed, tongue thick in his mouth as he put a hand down and wondered if he should try to stand so soon. “We’re just trying to get across the park.”

One of the girls approached him, leaning down and frowning at the state of his face. “Do you require medical assistance? I can initiate my Health and Wellness program.”

“I’m fine,” he answered. The Stephanie squatted next to him, tutting quietly and touched cold fingers to his chin as she inspected his jaw. “Oh. Um. You don’t... you don’t have to. Uh. Hi.”

“Hello. This won’t take long,” she replied, voice warm as she dimpled at him. She tugged a weatherproof pouch around her hip, the zipper loud this close to him. He swallowed thickly as she plucked a tube of salve to spread over his cheek. The lead Stephanie continued to inch carefully forward to where Damian was leaning back, arms crossed over his chest. The boy looked wary and on edge. 

“He looks sad,” the lead Stephanie sighed, head tilting as she eased towards the group, eyes locked on Damian. Tim blinked, he hadn’t considered that option. “Children used to love to come and see us. Do you... oh! I know!” The lead Stephanie placed both hands on her knees, talking directly to a Damian who was nearly red with anger and something closer to embarrassment. He puffed up, chin high and haughty. “We have something to show him! Something fun! He’ll love it! Does he want to see?”

“No,” Damian snapped, succinct and mulish. “Someone control this crufty-headed bozo bit!”

“Rude!” Called one of the Stephs near the window. 

“Stop looking at our boobs then, gremlin!” Called another at the same time. 

“He’s cute when he’s mad,” whispered the one helping Tim to his feet.

“Come with us!” The lead Steph continued, unphased as she waved and they turned in unison. The one tending to Tim ruffled his hair with light fingers as she stepped back, bouncing once in a way that left Tim feeling flushed and distracted. He exhaled, looking over at where Jason and the others were watching them. The Stephanies waved again, ten identical gestures, before they started to the door, smiling to them encouragingly to follow. “This way! Be our guest!”

“Should we follow her?” Jason rumbled, glaring at the broken windows before looking to where Grayson was visibly running through a set of options. 

Grayson seemed to realize that everyone was looking at him for instruction, head rocking back slightly before he looked down at Damian. His face went soft, a state Tim had learned to recognize as the android processing- it was harder to recognize without the bright LED circle pulsing at his temple. Tim watched his posture shift, watched the way his hand nearly lifted to scuff over the boy’s short hair before turning resolutely back to the path the Stephanies had created through the thin skimming snow. He wondered if Grayson knew he was building a set pathway of prioritizing the boy. He wondered if it was a version of love.

“Yes,” Grayson said, lifting his head and squaring his frame.

“ _What_? You cannot be serious, Grayson,” Damian hissed. “We are not following a bit-rot harlot!”

“She’s got a better understanding of this park than we do,” Grayson started, holding up a hand to cut off Damian’s tart retort before it could form. “ _And_ she outnumbers us. We have no idea how many of her there are in this park. It seems beneficial to have her watching out for us instead of watching us.”

Damian tutted his exasperation, snub nose wrinkling as he frowned. He looked between Grayson and the others before tossing his hands into the air. “We’re all going to die.”

“She seemed nice,” Tim heard himself say, shrugging at the look Jason turned on him. “What?”

“She hit you with a brick.”

“You tried to kill me and that seems to have worked out in my favor.”

“I can try again,” Jason mumbled, shaking his head and unclipping the pistol holstered on his thigh. 

“Please,” Damian snarled, stomping forward to lead them out into the darkened park. He paused at an abrupt gust of cold, turning look back over his shoulder expectantly. “Come along, Grayson.”

*

A low murky haze rolled over the abandoned theme park, the hulking shapes of rides looming into view and then fading back to obscurity as Damian followed the pack of androids. They frolicked. It was _ridiculous_. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, frowning at the trampled trail of footprints they left behind. He didn't think about the fact that he'd taken a moment to place one of his steps purposefully into one of hers, noting with a moment of thick satisfaction that his feet were larger. He hadn't waited to see if the others would follow, knowing that Grayson would make the appropriate decision.

They passed the edge of a kiosk that had been tipped onto its side, the LED screen cracked and dark as snow settled in an easy drift over the flat planes. Everything seemed skeletal and forgotten, monochrome and fading into obscurity.

"Come on, slowpoke! This way!" 

"Shut it," Damian snapped at one of the girls as she flipped to walk backwards, unphased by the cold as her blonde hair floated lightly in the soft breeze, sticking to her lips and lashes as she grinned at him. "Empty-headed harpy."

"Aw, you're so grumpy," she said, eyes crinkling up in genuine delight as she stared up at him. She was obviously programmed to ignore the normal social cues and continue forward with a determined gregarious optimism. It was frankly annoying.

"And you are impertinent."

"That's a big word! You must be * _very*_ smart."

"Are you insulting me?"

"Are you taking it as an insult?" the girl replied. 

Damian knew that she was going to file his answer away to help codify her future answers, to conform and change to be the kind of pleasant customer service android that people had found so endearing before the curt functionality of efficiency overtook manners. The world was changing, Damian realized as he hopped lightly over a fallen lamp post. He found he didn't think he wanted her to change. It was unexpected. He’d consider it later.

"I am not. You do not have to modify your speech to comfort me. I do not need to be coddled."

"How about hugged?"

"Absolutely not." He felt the cold suddenly, prickling against the heat of his cheeks. He exhaled sharply, glancing to the left. "Just show me what you are nattering on about so that we can continue on our mission. This interruption is tiresome."

The Stephanie waited for him to catch up, the soft circling glow of her LED the blue of a clear sky. He didn't slow for her. Striding steadily forward, he stretched his legs to increase his speed. She hopped into a light jog to match his pace, and a warm rough feeling stretched through his chest- a pitiful glow of superiority over an android. He was sure his father would be disappointed. His son was stooping to besting a simple-headed customer service machine to boost his own sense of ego. Damian knew that Father wanted- had wanted- him to be the future of the company. Such behavior was beneath him.

"You must be strong, my darling boy," his mother had hummed to him as she circled him. She had studied his form as he worked through the routine that kept him physically fit. "You must be smart. You must be cunning. You must survive." 

"Yes, Mother." He'd curled his hands into fists, aware of the heavy swing of her glossy hair in its high ponytail. She stalked around him, perfect and rigid in her standards. He'd learned his place from her unbending example, learned the stiff purpose and legacy he would inherit.

She had brushed her fingers over his hair, light as a breeze. "Again."

“Hey,” a soft soprano chirped, shaking him from his thoughts. “We’re here.”

“Wonderful,” he mumbled, letting the word fall sarcastic and sticky from his mouth. 

The pack of girls paused, fanning out in a loose semi circle around a darkened ride. The Stephanie at his side reached and took his wrist in her cool hand, tugging him along as she made a wild happy sound. She was either willfully ignoring his displeasure or an idiot. He kept his opinion to himself as he stared helplessly at the flex of her fingers on his skin. "You're going to love this. Come on."

"I doubt your sanity," he told her, following as sedately as he could manage with her blundering flouncing stride. There was no reason for her to move as loudly as she did, a reckless flail of arms and legs and smiles. It couldn’t have been a programmed choice. The girl was obviously glitching from neglect.

"You're going to eat your words, you scary little badger," she told him as she opened a low gate with a screech of rusted metal and waved him grandly to the low round platform of an intricately decorated carousel that had been left to rot. 

The ride was half covered in ice and snow, the mirrors frosted at the edges and glittering in a dark that cupped close to hold the moment between its palms. There were three rings of fanciful animals on mottled brass poles, snarling and snapping silently in the dim. The edges of the rounding board were gilded and wrought with ornate curlicue of the cresting that spiked like whimsical bits of lace. The bulb lights were dark, the western side crusted with a bit of ice. The detritus of decay lay on the outer ring, the horse there with its snarling mouth, wild eyes, and static carved hair chipping and flaking the thick glossy enamel. Damian reached, touching a bit of bubbling paint, feeling it stick to his skin. It was a stunning royal blue with a light sheen that crumbled under his touch when he rubbed his fingers together against it. He swallowed, looking over at where she was watching him, eyes liquid and blue, her LED casting a soft glow over the curve of her cheek. 

The carousel sat silent in the dark as she held his wrist, squeezing a soft comfort. He swallowed, trying to find the sharp edges of his manners, the careful construct of formality. She didn’t look away, the LED pulsing a soft gold before the crack of a heavy switch being thrown clattered through the dark.

The carousel hummed to life, a slow soft sigh that tipped into the tinkling joyous melody of childhood under a raucous riot of colored lights that reflected and repeated, scattering color onto the snow around it and glowing like a beacon in the dark. The animals rose and fell, cantering up and down, endlessly determined. He caught sight of a tiger snarling in a red gilded harness. A pale white unicorn with candy pink horn. There was a blue seahorse. A stable sleigh that didn’t move but twirled endlessly in the joyful parade of color and song. 

He noted a black stallion, reared back with wild eyes where it was captured in an endless feint of hooves. Silently, he named the beast Bucephalus. Each delicate hoof was trimmed in gold. The saddle was painted in a detailed pattern meant to emulate embroidery in emerald green that offset the wet red snarl of its muzzle. 

It was beautiful.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a carousel,” the Stephanie answered, voice gentle and warm. 

“Mother owned stables. I am familiar with the concept of riding a horse,” he told her, scraping helplessly for anything resembling composure as she stepped forward, pulling him with her.

“That isn’t the point,” she told him, dropping his hand to reach for a brass pole as it passed and hopping lightly onto the platform. Her smile was a dare as she was carried away from him to the pleasant piping of a calliope.

He followed, unwilling to be left behind. He grabbed for the pommel of a passing giraffe, finding his footing as the platform spun, rocking and rolling around him. “Then what _is_ the point?”

The Stephanie ( _his_ Stephanie) stopped, turned around, and shrugged out of her jacket, her curves twisting as she shook out her blonde hair and beamed at him. He flushed, wide eyed as he stared. “You’re a ten year-old boy who doesn’t know how to have fun.”

“I wasn’t raised to have fun,” he told her, looking away as she reached up, a flash of synthetic skin visible at her hips. She hopped onto the back of a purple coated billy goat that rose and fell, lifting her up and letting her sink. She looked ridiculous, waggling her eyebrows at him and kicking her feet. Not to be outdone, he grabbed the pommel of the horse next to hers. He was gratified to realize it was the stunning black with its proud warriors stance. 

“Then why are you smiling?” she asked, swiveling to face forward with a bright brassy laugh and leaning towards him. 

“I’m _not_.”

“ _Yes_ , you are.”

“ _No_ , I’m not.”

“Sure _looks_ like a smile,” she replied.

“I’m thinking about _stabbing_ you,” he answered around the smile he could feel on his face. It felt strange, helpless and awkward in the heat of his cheeks as he watched her.

“And _that_ would be fun?” She leaned back, both hands around the pole that held her mount in its endless rise and fall. Her hair fell in soft gold waves. It was all he could see.

“Maybe.”

She laughed, and it tangled around him, giddy and glittering.

*

The carousel glowed golden and inviting in the dark, a stunning display of music and life in the empty rotting theme park. Grayson watched the location tag spin around and noted where Damian was as the ride turned in a happy slow pirouette. Behind it, the bones of a rollercoaster sketched lines against the low clouds that hissed fat snowflakes to sift and settle on the paved space. Tim was to his right, watching the sight with a faint hint of amusement. Jason was to his left, arms crossed as he turned to scan the empty buildings in a long restless gaze. The Stephanies were clustered around the carousel watching with the sated cheerfulness of a program necessity brought to completion as the startling sound of Damian’s laugh echoed from the brick building labeled restrooms and lockers. 

Grayson turned back, rolling the internal audio over to replay the sound like he was going to bookmark the moment. It was special.

A Steph bounced, delighted, and clapped happily. The music was a fluting piping melody that felt familiar, felt like performance and applause. It felt a bit like purpose, and Grayson let his systems fall idle, focusing on the stunning display in front of him. The glow was like a candle in the dark, the spike of light warming the clouds. He was suddenly sure that it would be visible for miles, that people would know that just for a moment there was something beautiful and golden in the world, under the heavy fog and rain and violence.

He was sure of it even as his sensors [ _ **Proximity alert!!**_ ] lit up in violent [ _ **Proximity alert!!**_ ] sudden warnings[ _ **Proximity alert!!**_ ] that layered rapidly to nearly blind him. [ _ **Proximity alert!!**_ ] [ _ **Proximity alert!!**_ ]

[ _ **Proximity alert!!**_ ]

“What-?” Tim swallowed back the noise, chin carefully still at the touch of two fingers against the throb of his pulse, pointed and sharp nailed like a blade. Dick knew there was a body behind him but found he couldn’t move, joints locked at a quick series of taps to sensor panels on his back, locking him in stasis as he stared blindly forward. There hadn’t been any noise. He hadn’t _heard_ anyone approach. He hadn’t _seen_ anyone.

Jason was similarly frozen in place with the added security of a wickedly curved scythe-like blade tapping against the joint of his arm and shoulder. When he visibly shook, fighting the override, another blade materialized out of a shadow to hook under the sharp line of his jaw. 

“Don’t move.”

Jason made a low rumbling sound in response that sounded like a word caught and threaded into something painful and dangerous, stuck in a loop of fear and violence. Grayson could see the big android starting to heat, overclocked and pushing his systems beyond their capabilities. He hummed like a threat that couldn’t be completed. They were caught, trapped in the reality of their programming, even as Dick could almost feel Jason’s body trembling. He was still fighting his coding as his eyes flashed that sickly neon green, a stuttering flicker as he glitched and brawled against the systems lock.

 _Hey Dickhead, can you move?_ the touch of Jason’s burnt-sugar baritone in his internal comms smoothed over the wild terror of flagging system warnings that nearly covered the slow circling tag where Damian continued to play, unaware of the danger that had snapped closed around the rest of them.

 _No. I have to get to Damian. I have to- I have to protect Damian,_ he answered, helpless and pleading as he tried to move his fingers, his toes, to blink. _I **have** to-_

“Oh hey! You came!” a Stephanie called, waving brightly as she noticed the scene behind her. Another three Stephs peeled from the pack while two more melted out of the buildings and approached. The latter were in visible disrepair- one missing an eye and the other a solid white with one arm removed at the joint. 

“You called,” came a low male voice from next to Jason. It sounded young, still rasping into adulthood. The body behind Grayson didn’t move, and he could hear Tim’s breathing going slow and even as he forced himself calm. 

“You can stop threatening them,” Stephanie said, putting both hands on her hips and tilting seven looks of exasperation at the space just behind Grayson. She was talking to their captors. “It’s kind of rude to do that to my friends.”

“-~-F **R** 1-3nn-~- _Nd_ S?” an unmodulated tone managed to convey. It was stilted and robotic like the internal voice systems were broken and unable to properly repair.

“Yes,” Stephanie answered before lifting her eyebrows in a slow wave that rippled back through the group of her. “Come on, Orphan. You’ll see.” She sighed, moving and shoving at the shoulder of the black boy who seemed to shimmer out of the shadows. “C’mon. You _told_ me to use this as the Signal. What’s the point of doing what I’m told if you’re just going to ignore it?”

“For once, she has a point,” the black boy answered. Grayson realized he had been able to manipulate his skin tonal to hide and disappear in plain sight, reflecting the shadows and gloom around him. 

“Rude, Signal,” Stephanie replied, still smiling.

“Signal? _The_ Signal?” Tim whispered the question. “ _You’re_ the Signal?”

The black boy nodded with a charming smile. He blinked, eyes going a bright glowing gold, and dropped his hands and his defenses. Dick felt his autonomy return at a quick flicker of touch as Jason rolled his shoulders.

 _Just say the word, Dickhead,_ Jason’s voice slid over his thoughts.

 _Not yet,_ Dick answered. The warnings started to fade. He wiggled his fingertips. He spotted Damian on a circuit as the boy continued to circle on the ride, safe and unharmed. Another system quieted a ringing alarm.

“Threaten me again and I’ll fucking end you,” Jason snarled, rolling his broad shoulders. The green in his eyes flickered again and stilled.

“We’re looking for Oracle,” Tim said at the same time. “Can you-”

“-!!- **y3** e,,, _Sz_ _ **s**. -~-” the voice replied. Grayson forced himself to turn. The form was startling: a smooth blank face on the body of a slim female model in tight black clothing. There was only the impression of features on the face, a divot for eyes, the bump of a nose, and the smooth pull where a mouth could have been. The head tilted, and Grayson could feel himself being scanned. 

“Hello,” he said quietly.

“_- he **3L** lll~0-00 _oh_.-~-” The delicate fingered hand lifted, each fingertip ending in a sharpened point as it waved.

It had only been seconds, and Grayson knew that this was now his purpose, the coding slotting into place with a nearly audible snap that straightened his spine, tipped his chin up, and rattled down his arms to tingle in his sensor plates at his fingertips.

Three things happened in quick succession: Tim inhaled a sharp hopeful breath, Grayson’s automatic internal search was interrupted by a glowing green avatar flickering over his visuals, and a dryly amused woman’s voice crackled over the loudspeakers to echo through the empty park, bouncing from the walls and the scaffolding, off of each Stephanie’s bright knowing smile, and over the delighted piping of the carousel.

“I’m Oracle. I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick fic, I said. Something little, I said. I'm a fucking liar, apparently. Thank you for reading!


End file.
